Winter's Mercy
by GirlWithTheRedSoxCap
Summary: They call the assassin Winter's Mercy. A shadow who hunts those who have wronged the North. A fate worse than death. ASoIaF/GoT AU for Season 5/A Dance With Dragons.


**1\. CAT.**

"Cat! Get over here, girl."

The merchant's voice was barely audible over the thrum of voices and shouts, his portly face scarcely visible in the haze of the Braavosi market.

The name had never meant much to her before, but as she wheeled her rickety cart of cockles, oysters, and clams over towards his stall, she couldn't help but remember a different voice in a different place in a different life.

Cat.

It was the name her father used to affectionately refer to her mother as back in Winterfell. Back when her parents were together and in love. When she spent her days running away from Septa Mordane and her needlepoint lessons. Instead, she chose to tag along with her older brothers.

When she taunted and fought with her oh-so-perfect sister, Sansa. When Arya had chased little Rickon through the halls of their home, and climbed trees with Bran, and explored the Godswood with Nymeria.

When Stark family were all alive and together and happy.

When Winterfell stood tall and proud as it had for hundreds of years, since the time of her ancestor Bran, the Builder. But now the castle she had once called home was nothing more than ash and rubble, with a tyrant staking claim over the ruins. Bran and Rickon's ashes were spread amongst the dust and ash of what had once been their home. Her dead father was called a traitor, and her beautiful mother was a rotting remains at the bottom of a river. Her brave and kind brother was a disfigured corpse and Nymeria was roaming the Riverlands. Sansa was a caged bird locked in the Red Keep, and Jon stood watch atop a wall of ice. Theon was gods know where. Arya hoped his bones were trapped under the ruins of what had once been his home. Theon Greyjoy was dead to her.

The ward of Winterfell name wasn't on Arya Stark's list. He should have been. He had betrayed Robb, who had loved him more than anyone. The Greyjoy heir captured Winterfell and held the little boys who once thought of Theon as family his prisoner. It was his fault Bran and Rickon were dead.

Theon Greyjoy had been her family once. And for that, she could never put him on her list. She may have wanted him dead. But she didn't want to be the one to do.

She never wanted to see him again. Because all she would be able to see in his sea foam eyes she would see him teaching her to the proper way to notch an arrow. Laughing with Robb and making faces at her from down the table during long and tedious feasts. But the girl who tried to so desperately to be No One knew that if it came to it, she wouldn't be able to drive the knife through his traitorous heart. And she hated herself for it.

Before the fat, drunk king had come and asked Ned Stark to be his hand. Before her uncle, Jon Arryn had died. Before Bran had been crippled after falling from the Broken Tower, the name was all too fitting in the end.

But the girl wasn't in the North anymore. She hadn't been for a long time. The scorching Braavosi sun and foreign tongue made sure to remind her of that.

Today was harder than most to ignore the life that had once belonged to Arya Stark.

Because today would mark five years. For five long years, Ned Stark has been dead. Five years since Ned Stark lost his head. Five years since they slandered her honorable father and falsely deemed him a traitor. Five years since loyalty killed him.

Five years since the girl had been Arya Stark.

The girl used to think that a part of her had died on that terrible day five years ago. That when the Lannister's took her Ned Stark's head, they stole a piece of her with it. Maybe her innocence or her childhood or some other sentimental nonsense that Sansa would always sigh over.

But it was gone, and in its place was a hole she would never fill, a dark consuming pit.

On that day, Arya Stark took her first life.

A round-faced stable boy who was just trying to do as he had been instructed, to tell someone if he saw the youngest Stark girl. And the youngest Stark girl had killed him for it. She still remembered the look of surprise on his face as she stuck Needle through his portly middle. The ways his blood bubbled out of his mouth. Innocent blood.

She no longer knew the number of those who had died at her hands. She had stopped trying to keep count long ago.

The Red Witch had been wrong about many things. But about the eyes she would shut forever, the lives she would take, about that she had been right.

Five years ago to the day a girl a disguised as an orphan boy from Flea Bottom by the name of Arry, had met a bastard blacksmith's apprentice named Gendry.

But she didn't want to think of the orphaned blacksmith either. He had been planning on leaving her, but he never got the chance. Despite it, she had tried to save him, bargain for his life, defend him. The Gendry was all she had. And now the stupid bullheaded boy was dead, just like her father.

Just like Arya Stark's father, the girl called Cat corrected herself.

Jaqen would never know. No one at the House of Black and White ever would. There was no way they could.

He didn't know of the term of endearment that belonged to Arya Stark's mother. He didn't know of the woman who seemed to be older than time itself who used to weave stories of creatures who disappeared long ago. Not even of the direwolf that's sometimes haunted her dreams, roaming the Riverlands with her pack.

Cat.

Nan.

Nymeria.

No, the Faceless Men would never know that these names meant something to her. To Arya Stark.

Of the names that the girl had possessed before she decided boarded a ship and came to the free city of Bravos.

Arry.

Weasel.

Beth.

Little Wolf.

Of the girl who had been disguised as a recruit for the Night's Watch. The girl who was too smart for own good who served Tywin Lannister at Harrenhall. The blind beggar in the streets of bravos. The beloved baby sister of Robb Stark and Jon Snow.

They called her Mercy now.

The first time she had heard it, she almost laughed at the irony of it.

Almost.

She was no longer Arya Stark. She hadn't been that girl in five long years.

And now, now she was No One.


End file.
